512 [Jan. 22, 



scarcely be recognised, were it not for the presence of limestone 

 ■yyith its characteristic fossils. Of the beds of trap there are four, 

 one of them about 200 feet thick ; and that they are true beds 

 which have been poured out over the bottom of an ancient sea is 

 proved, not only by their regular interstratification among aqueous 

 deposits, and by the earthy texture and amygdaloidal structure of 

 their upper parts, but by the quantity of trap fragments included 

 in the conglomerates which alternate with them. The lower part 

 of one of these beds of conglomerates is, by the admixture of these 

 fragments, converted into a kind of tufa. One of the beds of trap 

 forms the bottom of the carboniferous series, and rests on the 

 edges of hard shales and thin bedded limestones, filled with 

 Silurian fossils. The edges of the Silurian rocks are slightly 

 altered at the point of contact. 



These rocks being on the margin of the great line of ancient 

 disturbed strata, which extend from Cape St. George along the 

 southern edge of the Pictou coal trough, have been subjected to 

 more than one igneous convulsion. A few miles further along the 

 shore, the same beds of conglomerate and sandstone, with inter- 

 stratified amygdaloid, are seen in a vertical position, with their 

 sandstones changed into quartz rock and jasper. This is, ap- 

 parently, in consequence of the eruption of the crystalline green- 

 stone and other igneous rocks which appear in their neighbour- 

 hood, and we are thus informed that the igneous action along the 

 above-named anticlinal line, which continued to the close of the 

 carboniferous period, was exerted also at the commencement of 

 that period, and no doubt influenced the deposition of its strata in 

 a manner as yet very imperfectly understood. 



2. Geological Features of the Country round the IsiYNE^ of the 

 Taurus in the Pashalic of Diarbekr described from Observa- 

 tions made in the Year 1843. By Waeington W. Smyth, 

 Esq., B.A., F.G.S. 



In that part of Asiatic Turkey, where the provinces of Anatolia, 

 Armenia, Kurdistan, and Mesopotamia unite, the chain of the 

 Taurus is bounded on the one side by the Euphrates and on the 

 other by the Tigris, and this district, being now out of the way of 

 the main roads of commerce, has until within a few years been 

 almost entirely neglected. 



The interest, however, attached to these regions in the present 

 precarious state of the Ottoman empire, and the difficulty of ob- 

 taining information concerning them, will excuse the imperfect 

 condition of the sketch now offered of the geographical and geolo- 

 gical configuration of the country ; but I have to regret that my 

 absence during some years from England prevented my being ac- 



